How to Use Transaction Pro Importer & QuickBooks Online

In QuickBooks® Online (QBO), you can only enter 100 lines into a journal entry and QBO doesn’t save that transaction while you are entering the data. In order to avoid losing this data, I needed to find a viable solution.

I searched the Intuit® Marketplace to see what apps were out there to help me and that is when I found one of my now-favorite apps, Transaction Pro Importer. With this app, I just had to format an excel spreadsheet to look like the template they provided me and then I could simply upload transactions to my heart’s content. My hands were saved – and so was my computer!

Prior to starting my own consulting business and becoming a QuickBooks ProAdvisor®, I worked as a forensic accountant, auditor and senior staff accountant. Most of my time was spent in Excel, not some accounting system, where I learned that we really do all the heavy lifting in our work in Excel. This is where we create analyses for our clients or very involved calculations to come up with different journal entries.

Thankfully, Transaction Pro Importer has capitalized on that.

Before Transaction Pro Importer, I would just start entering journal entries as one whole entry to get the data entry done faster. Now, I have the luxury to make my clients’ books look great.

I am able to save a ton of time, but more importantly, I am able to format the transactions the way I want prior to upload. For example, I have one client where I allocate their staff’s time to their different jobs based on an external time tracking system. We now use Excel and Transaction Pro Importer to get the entries into QBO. Instead of one large entry, we create a new journal entry, with a different number for each employee so the books are more transparent and easier to review.

Once I got the hang of the system, I found that there are a ton of uses for it. This also means there are even more business opportunities for my business. Here are some highlights of transactions we’ve been able to complete quickly with Transaction Pro Importer:

Import years of time entry for over 20 employees from data exported from another system.

Import a financial planner’s ledger of transactions (hundreds of lines) so we provide her with different client reporting out of QBO.

Import overhead allocations created from an Excel spreadsheet that allocates costs to jobs based on the percentage of time spent on those jobs.

Do you see why I love this program? With Transaction Pro Importer, the opportunities are endless.

About the Author

Cathy Iconis, CPA

Cathy Iconis, CPA, is the CEO of Iconis Group, an outsourced bookkeeping firm, and founder of QBOchat.com, a community for QuickBooks Online Users. Iconis has brought her experience in big business finance to the small business owner. Her goal is to connect small businesses to their numbers using the best in class technology, including QuickBooks Online.